I read some really great reviews throughout the week and I obviously can’t post to all of them because, then my postings would basically just be reblogging. But a couple new bloggers I follow I wanted to let you all know about so you could join in reading their reviews if you are so inclined.

A Book and A Latte is a huge audio book lover and she has a great review about Paper Towns by John Green up on her website. John Green keeps popping up on my radar, I really need to read something of his. I ordered Paper Towns from the library, but it disappeared from my queue, I should probably get on that.

Book Chick City talks about Saraphina by Rachel Hartman, a much anticipated book about humans and dragons and magic, oh my! Mom, this really sounds like something you would like. :D I’m sure there is already a long queue for it at my library, so I may wait for the fever to die down a bit before requesting it.

Like this:

There has been a heated debate and debacle on the internets lately about ARCs, BEA, ALA, and Bullies on GR (and the people who tried to stop the bullying by exposing accounts and snide comments). It has been a bit of a disaster all up in here and I don’t really have much to add, except “For shame”, to what has already been said. If you want to get caught up on all of this I recommend reading the following, thoughtful, and intelligent postings.

The Book Smugglers (an excellent book blogging site) has been at the forefront of discussing the issues, especially since they have even been involved on some of the panels at the BEA Bloggers Conference this year. Here is their recap of the conferenceand why they felt it was more about authors and publishers and how bloggers should be cheerleaders, than it was about tips for bloggers and being better writers and bloggers. They also wrote an excllent piece on ARCs, Librarians, and Bloggers which links to all the other relevent postings including a well written response from The Lost Lola whose video started it all. You can see I lean toward the Book Bloggers side of things, especially when I read this post by a librarian who was not so nice in her assumptions of bloggers. Read in a Single Sitting discusses non-professional (those who don’t make money blogging and promoting books) versus unprofessional behavior over on her Bookish News and Publishing Tidbits.

In addition to the “librarians vs bloggers” postings that has been discussed recently among the blogs is a not so new discussion on bloggers bad reviews of author’s books, and how these authors and publishers respond. Apparently, bloggers are supposed to like every book that they read. This would not be true of anyone, and I find most bloggers simply say the book was not for them and why. This also doesn’t make them unprofessional, in spite of what other people may say. Attacking and author and giving a critique of a reading are two different things. Foz Meadows discusses bad book reviews, GoodRead’s unmonitored forums, and the definition of bullying over at her blog. Definitely interesting and thought fodder.

And now because I’ve been thoroughly intense with these links and it is all a bit depressing, I present the mandatory kitten to cheer you up!